Getting out of bed & out of the house

by John on May 25th, 2010

I managed a seven mile run this morning. I very nearly went back to bed, instead, though. Un/fortunately, I have an epic alarm system in the house. Not only is my alarm clock incredibly loud, but it’s on the other side of the room. This means that I need to physically get out of bed in order to turn it off — and “go back to bed” is a bit easier to overcome than “stay in bed for just a little while longer”.

Of course, once I’m up, going back to bed is really not an option — I’ve got these three little workout buddies who don’t take “no” for an answer too often, and one must deal with these three once the alarm goes off.

The blond dog is Hobbes, a rescued Cairn terrier and oldest of the pack. He enjoys the morning walk more than either of the other dogs, but if it weren’t for the other dogs, I’m pretty sure I’d be able to sleep in for a bit. On a lazy Saturday (though these are pretty rare these days), he’ll hang out in bed will past 8 or 9. Of course, at some point, if he realizes that it’s nice outside, there is no pacifying him without a walk.

The brown dog is Snickelfritz, a border terrier, and he’s easily the most difficult of the three to deal with in the morning. He’s the most food-driven dog I’ve ever known . . . once he thinks it might be time to start the day, he gets super cuddly & whiny, just waiting for breakfast. The morning walk is simply the price of admission to a bowl of kibble.

Cosmo, the black dog (a yorkie-poo), is the wildcard in the bunch. Hobbes, we can convince to lie down & wait. Snickelfritz takes some more prodding, but I can get him to lie back down and fall asleep most of the time. Cosmo, though – he marches to his own beat. Not only will he wake you up at 3 in the morning in order to lift the covers because he’s cold, but he’ll also tackle either dog as we try to remain asleep, knowing that he’ll get what he wants (attention).

This morning, the alarm actually went off — normally either CJ starts fussing or the dogs irritate me that I’m up before the buzzer. So, I get up, deal with an overexcited Snickelfritz (he knows that breakfast is right around the corner, so he starts barking – maybe it will make it come faster?), head downstairs, put my 20 pound weight vest on, and I’m out the door. 1.5 miles later, the dogs were fed . . . and I very nearly went back to bed.

The only reason that I managed to get out for the run was because I was already up. I convinced myself that I wouldn’t actually fall back asleep for the next hour – so why not run. Somehow, that logic worked (John at 5:30 in the morning is easily convinced of most things) . . . I’m just surprised I was “with it” enough in order to come up with the argument in the first place.

As far as the distance – this is the furthest that I’ve ever run during a pre-work run. It’s 10 times around the .7 mile track (that math is easy enough for me to handle), and I managed it in just under an hour. Of course, I couldn’t be bothered to put on the heart rate monitor & stopwatch at that time, so I don’t know if my ending pace was anywhere near my early pace, but I felt pretty strong the entire time.

Of course, I’m especially hungry this morning — I’ve had a grapefruit, banana, and a bunch of blueberries — and I’m trying really, really hard to ignore the fact that somebody brought in doughnuts.

About

John is an endurance athlete, when he's not a writer, which is what he falls back on when he doesn't have a lot of gigs as a musician . . . which is what he does when he's not working as a web developer, which is how he makes a living.

He lives in central Pennsylvania with his wife, two children, dog, and his few remaining marbles.

When he grows up, he wants to be an astronaut/mad-scientist/nacho-taste-tester.